


Time is What it Takes

by APgeeksout



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Affection, Extreme Deadline Treat, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Multi, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 11:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20191762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: Maybe it's because it shouldn't come as a surprise that they don't really talk about it at first. It's just there along with every other little unspoken thing between them: Roman isn't really a person until after he's got some breakfast in him; Seth gets loopy when he takes pain pills or cold meds; Dean sleeps better in a shared bed; they all want to run the business; Seth and Dean are each other’s soulmates.Roman is no one’s.





	Time is What it Takes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voodoochild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/gifts).

** 2013 **

Even long before got an eyefull of their identical marks, Roman thinks he should probably have suspected that Dean and Seth were a matched set. All the way back to FCW, where they were usually at each other’s throats, they'd always been weirdly in sync.

Then again, he figures he is justified in his surprise that it's not floating around as a persistent, unkillable dirtscreen rumor. Or an open secret around the locker room: their marks are hidden by normal wrestling gear, but should be noticeable in the showers. Maybe their other co-workers through the years have all been better at keeping their eyes to themselves than Roman has been lately.

Maybe it's because it shouldn't come as a surprise that they don't really talk about it at first. It's just there along with every other little unspoken thing between them: Roman isn't really a person until after he's got some breakfast in him; Seth gets loopy when he takes pain pills or cold meds; Dean sleeps better in a shared bed; they all want to run the business; Seth and Dean are each other’s soulmates.

Roman is no one’s.

* * *

**2014 - April**

"What're you thinking about so loud over there, big man?" Dean's voice is a harsh rasp - there was some yelling, earlier - but, when he cranes his neck to look past Seth's head on the pillow next to him and meet Roman's eyes, his face is more curious than confrontational.

Seth stays quiet - either feeling that they don't need a peacekeeper right now, or just really and truly done playing that part for them - but he's watching, too.

He turns onto his side, facing the pair of them, nested like spoons in the drawer. The sheet spread haphazardly over the three of them already rides low around their waists, and he tugs it a little lower still to expose the edges of the little sunburst shape tucked into the hollow of each of his partners’ left hip. The colors - deep red and warm orange that always put Roman in mind of certain late-winter sunsets - show up a little differently against their different skin tones, but the shape is undeniably the same.

“These, I guess,” he says, and strokes the pad of his thumb across Dean’s mark, following the arc of one of the lines radiating out from the center, and drawing an involuntary shiver out of Dean. “What’s it like, for you?”

He’s never been sure how to talk about soulmate stuff, really. Sometimes people get weird - pitying - about his not having one. When he was younger, sometimes he’d worn an unnecessary sweatband around his wrist and just let new people assume he was private about the mark that must be underneath.

Sometimes theirs is an uncomfortable topic. His mom’s best girlfriend has a sleeve almost as elaborate as his own, designed to blot out the first words she’d ever heard from a man who would go on to hit her. His freshman-year roommate had seen his mark - bold handwriting just below his collarbone - fade to a faint silvery scar overnight, Katharine who dotted her i’s with a little circle suddenly gone before ever meeting her soulmate.

But, the stories aren’t _all_ bleak - Jimmy and Naomi can pass each other notes just by doodling on their own hands; Sami can hum a few bars of a song and know it’ll stick itself in Kevin’s head, even when they’re worlds apart; Bayley's and Sasha's marks are always changing, a counter tallying up all the time they spend together. Maybe Seth and Dean’s is one of the fun links. And even if it’s not, after the wars he’s been through with them, Roman wants to believe they’ll all survive an awkward conversation.

"It's dreams for me," Seth offers, when Dean doesn't speak up right away. "Not every night, but the really bad ones and the really good ones seem to come through to me."

"Took him so long to notice because the 'really good ones' were just like his normal sex dreams about himself," Dean adds, then dips his head to fasten his teeth in a little lovebite onto the ridge where Seth's shoulder joins his neck.

Seth squirms and swats at his head, not anything like hard enough to actually dislodge Dean. "What can I say? You've got good taste, on occasion."

Some loose pieces click together in Roman’s head: the way Seth is so often the first to be woken by the worst of Dean’s nightmares, even when Roman’s the one sleeping next to his trembling shape.

Dean must take his thoughtfulness for something else, because he pulls away from Seth's neck to give Roman a good-natured leer. "Don't go feelin' left out, big man. You're a regular feature, too."

"Like I said: good taste," Seth echoes, his warm hand settling on Roman’s side, spanning his ribs.

“I pick up, like, flashes. Feelings,” Dean clarifies. “All the big ones. Especially when we’re touching.”

Other things come together at that: Seth’s efforts to chill Ambrose out usually involving a hand cupping his face or pressed against the flat of his belly; that time before they’d all three fallen into bed the first time, Dean asking _you too?_ his chin hooked over Seth’s shoulder and both of them looking at Roman like he was something good enough to eat; how often, when Roman is giving it to Seth good, Dean will take Seth’s hand to kiss his knuckles or press to his cheek or just hold in his own while he offers praise and suggestions.

“You really don’t have one? A mark, I mean?” Dean asks, uncharacteristically cautious. He follows it up with a much more familiar smirk, eyeing Roman with intent. “I feel like we’ve done a pretty thorough examination of your bod over time, but I don’t wanna assume.”

“Nah,” he says, feeling a little bit of heat rise into his face. Could be the conversation, could be the way Seth’s hand has drifted down his torso, drawing lines of heat across his skin in its wake. “Nobody out there looking for me.”

“Good,” Seth says savagely, and dips his head to kiss a sloppy line down Roman’s throat instead of elaborating.

Even though they’re apparently not the kind of soulmates who have a telepathic link, Dean’s the one who finishes the thought for him, fingers combing into Roman’s hair as he presses closer and says, “Means nobody can show up to say you’re not ours.”

* * *

**2014 - June**

“How’s that?” Dean asks, resettling a cloth-wrapped ice pack across his back, just under his shoulder blades, where it’s been throbbing the deepest.

Roman moans out his thanks, deeply glad that there’s no stranger out there feeling this pain through an inexplicable link. He reaches a hand out blindly for Dean, who he can hear has already resumed pacing his rut through the hotel’s thin carpet.

It takes him a few more circuits of the aisleway between the beds, another solid minute of heartfelt swearing, before Dean sinks down beside him, settling so carefully that it makes Roman ache just as sharply as any jounce to the mattress might have.

“You get any sleep?” he asks, pretty sure he already knows the answer to that as Dean’s red eyes drop away from his own.

It’s Tuesday, going on supper time, and they haven’t had the heart to pack up and roll out of Indianapolis yet. He doesn’t know where Dean went last night - early this morning, really - when he’d slipped out around dawn, after they’d given up on getting their hands on Seth and come back here to lick their wounds, but it’s enough that he’s come back to him now. Seth hasn’t shattered them completely.

Dean only shakes his head, confirming his suspicion, and shifts closer when Roman scratches through his messy hair.

“Stay with me tonight?” he asks hopefully. He wants Dean to rest. Wants to ease him out of the dark dreams he’s sure to have - even if Dean would probably encourage him to let them run long and bitter enough to plague Seth, too.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees in a jagged sliver of his usual voice.

Roman kisses his temple and nudges him to move closer and tuck in along his side, and hopes he can help ease him into a sweet dream. Dean deserves the peace, and Seth deserves to know they’re getting along without him.

* * *

**2015**

“Knock it off,” Dean says gruffly.

Roman ignores his huffing and presses a cool rag filled with ice cubes against the corner of his jaw where his own misaimed punch had landed with a sickening smack while Wyatt had crowed to the audience about the unbeatable bond of his matched set of monsters.

“I mean it. Don’t let Swamp Thing into your head.” He puts his hand on top of Roman’s where it rests on the cold pack, but doesn’t pull it away. “You think I need some soulbond hoodoo to know what you’re thinking?” he goes on in a softer voice. “Hate to break it to you, babe, but you ain’t that mysterious, and accidents happen, even to soulmates.”

He huffs a reluctant laugh at himself and nods his agreement. “Yeah, I hear you. I still hate that I hurt you.”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure you remember that having a soulmate hasn’t exactly kept me from hurting,” Dean says, and this time he does push Roman’s hand away from his face, the better to crawl across the bed to straddle his lap instead. They have some distance on Seth now, but not so much that talking about him is easy.

The icepack lands on the floor beside the bed and Roman settles that hand as an anchor at Dean’s hip. For a moment, he imagines the mark hidden beneath Dean’s clothes and his hand searing itself into his own skin. Dean angles forward to touch their foreheads together, and then further still, until Roman’s on his back on the bed with Dean’s weight settling over him, solid and sweet.

“As far as I’m concerned, the universe linked me to him to make sure you and me would find each other.” Dean leans down for a kiss, and he meets him halfway, arms wrapping around his middle to tug him closer. Dean breaks away, but only far enough to mouth at his throat instead, grazing teeth against his skin in a promise. “You need a mark to make that real, I’ll give you a good one.”

* * *

**2017 - Summerslam**

“Congratulations, Champs! You save me a cold one?”

Dean and Seth both turn to him, all big grins, identical red belts snapped around their waists from the photo shoot just wrapped. The two of them are a matching pair once more. Roman had planned to be carrying his own coordinating strap out of the arena tonight, but as consolation prizes go, it’s hard to beat how it feels to have them both waiting on him, looking happy and light.

Dean dances over to him and goes up on tiptoes to smack a kiss onto his hair and lets Roman wind an arm around him and squeeze him close. Seth hesitates a step behind, but tips forward into his arms easily enough after Roman beckons him into the huddle.

“Come back to my room tonight?” he asks.

Dean is already mumbling in agreement and tilting his head to kiss his neck in the spot that always makes him shiver, when Seth goes stiff and unsure on his other side. Dean reaches across to smooth a hand over Seth’s hair.

“Both of you,” he clarifies, “and bring your belts.”

When Seth sighs and sort of melts against him, Roman’s not sure if it’s at knowing that he’s still part of them - as if everything between them could ever really be over - or at the way Dean’s hand has shifted to fist in the back of his hair in a dirty promise. Doesn’t matter, really; fills him up either way.

“Like you read my mind,” Dean says, pulling back just enough to let Roman appreciate his lascivious grin and the dimples it leaves in his cheeks.

“Or mine,” Seth agrees, voice thick with something Roman’s willing to let him pretend is pure lust.

“The two of you sharing one between you explains a lot.”

“Hey!” Seth objects, even though he looks a hundred times more thrilled to be in for the teasing than he is offended by the insult.

Dean snaps his teeth and says, “Play your cards right and you’re gonna be the one we’re sharing between us.”

Roman listens to them bicker at him and each other and lets himself feel warmed through as he ushers them down the echoing hallway. His waist and the skin of his hip might both be bare, but he doesn’t need a title to run his yard or a sign from the universe to know that these are his people.


End file.
